"But," said Hatteras, "can't we wait a few days?"
"What do you hope for?" answered Johnson.
"I don't know. Who can foretell the future? Only a few days yet! It's hardly enough to rest your wearied bodies. We couldn't go two stages without dropping from weariness, without any snow-house to shelter us!"
"But a terrible death certainly awaits us here!" cried Bell.
"My friends," continued Hatteras in a tone almost of entreaty, "you are despairing too soon! I should propose to seek safety to the north, were it not that you would refuse to follow me. And yet are there not Esquimaux near the Pole, as well as at Smith's Sound? That open sea, of which the existence is uncertain, ought to surround a continent. Nature is logical in everything it does. Well, we ought to believe that vegetation appears when the greatest cold ceases. Is there not a promised land awaiting us at the north, and which you want to fly from without hope of return?"
Hatteras warmed as he spoke; his heated imagination called up enchanting visions of these countries, whose existence was still so problematical.
"One more day," he repeated, "a single hour!"
Dr. Clawbonny, with his adventurous character and his glowing imagination, felt himself gradually aroused; he was about to yield; but Johnson, wiser and colder, recalled him to reason and duty.
"Come, Bell," he said, "to the sledge!"
"Come along!" answered Bell.